Viera and Hrothgar Megathread

[spf1200]

Definitely feels like Horthgar got the short end of the stick here. If nothing else is done they need to fix the way hair is done on them. Making a player pay $10 to be able to change their hair ( and forcing them to use a different face for the hair they want) is crazy.

I would love to see all the issues with these 2 races get fixed, but sadly as someone who has played since 2.2 and seen many projects get abandoned with no updates I'm not holding my breath. Hopefully they at least address the issues during the fan fest in May.

[BunniEclair]

I hope it does, heck I'd even bump this thread myself if I knew it'd solve anything; which I may just be inclined to do.. Since these threads usually show more of an outcry, and have good topics going on in them



Honestly, people do.. But they also do have a limit before how tiring it gets seeing a different thread on the same topic.. Not to mention I think it just does more detriment than it does good.. Compare some of the discussion this thread to the other one, for example. It's a whole lot more practical and reasonable in here, so it'd be more reasonable to use this thread to be a means for giving feedback when it's not suffocated by derailing

I get that it’s tiring, but it’s also really tiring for viera and hrothgar to continue to have this issue. The reason it repeatedly comes up is because they repeatedly keep putting things in the game that we cannot use as rewards while offering us nothing to compensate, when we were already shorted right out of the gate.

Yoship being tight lipped about it doesn’t really help at all. I’d be willing to bet you’d see a lot less vitriol if he would have just given us small updates on what they are working on to try to fix the situation. And it *is* a situation that needs fixing, this much he has acknowledged. Just a quick update in the misc portion of LL would have been enough. Something to show us it’s not just permanently on the back burner while they push full steam ahead towards more cool stuff for everyone but us.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Im of the Opinion that the Hrothgar Hair Issue is the result of Crunch. YoshiP said they just barley got both new races together in time, so I see the Hair Issue as a Shortcut.
Something they would (hopefully) fix and deal with later. Because nobody can disagree or deny, it is a pretty bad system, something I bet they were aware of; or definitely QUICKLY made aware of that would need to be figured out.
Im not somebody that changes things often, I usual find what I like and Commit to it, but even I dont like the idea of paying a Fantasia to get a Haircut in game.

[Tsukino]

I'm pretty much done with playing viera and plan to switch back to miqo'te, most likely after the fan fest announcements confirm they're not doing anything at all for new hairstyles after an entire expansion cycle.

I do still have some thoughts on how they can address this, but I've pretty much given up hope they ever will.

1. Hrothgars are the only race in the game that have to pay *actual* money to change their hairstyles because, for some genius reason, their hairstyles are tied to their faces. Hrothgar, on release date, started out with 8 racial unique hairstyles, but as I've stated before, their hairstyles are tied to their faces (theres not even a lore reason on why this is and some of the hrothgar NPCs have hairstyles that belong to different faces!). So, 8 hairstyles, 4 faces, meaning we really only get the choice between TWO hairstyles. Which, quoting a statement during the live letter before ShB release

I have long been of the opinion that they should open up the aesthetician to every option within a race/sex, and leave fantasia only for people who want to change races. I know they were trying to go for some level of realism with only being able to change things that you would be able to change "in real life" like hairstyles or makeup, but functionally it's very silly to let people change their hair all they want but force people who want to just change their eye colors to buy a fantasia. Lots of people would love it, it would completely solve this problem with hrothgar, and people would still buy fantasia all the time to change race and/or sex.

2. Viera, during an interview with yoshi, were stated to have unique racial hairstyles for them that will be added after ShB release. Now, after ShB release could be anywhere between just minutes after ShB opened up to literal years. However, they are kept in the dark about what this means and with ShB reaching the end of its life cycle to usher in Endwalkers in the Fall, no further comment has been made about Viera hairstyles either. I have both a viera and hrothgar character that both remain up to date on content and I'd love to actually get some REAL customization support for them

They shouldn't have even made them unique in the first place. There is nothing special about the viera head shape at all compared to any previous races. The gap between the ear base and the head is a bad design decision to start with, and can easily just be filled in with more tufts in case it ever clips out. They add so many hairstyles from quests, side content, and the stupid caash shop, they could never possibly keep up with unique hairstyles for viera, so why did they do this in the first place?

Unfortunately the issue with hairstyles and hrothgar is more complicated. The way they're modeled and the way they use "hair" makes it difficult to keep up with the previous race's hairstyles, and it's a legitimate decision to make them look more unique rather than a mistake like with viera. The only thing I can think of is they just need to actually deliver on the promise to add more customization options (and fix the fantasia problem). Take one goddamned artist off making cash shop garbage or hire one new one to do this and it should be fine.

3. I can understand the team not wanting to go back and fit the older *FREE* headgear to the hrothgar and viera simply because of development costs and time taken, but this should NOT be the case for the mogstation items. I wouldn't cause this much of a stink about it if they allowed me to purchase specific pieces from the mogstation because I really only buy a lot of the outfits for their shoes, but they force me to buy the ENTIRE outfit...hat included! Thats $12 ~ $18 I spent on this whole outfit and I cant even wear the hats that comes with with ghdsbalfghidkjsakfbhdskjafdsa. Honestly, mog station headgear SHOULD be a priority since...y'know...we're spending actual money on it!

Although hats not working doesn't bother me much, this whole part of the problem has been completely stupid from the start. They don't care at all about things clipping through everything in the rest of the game all over the place - hair through body pieces, weapons through hair and headgear, nearly everything through every mount - so why does it suddenly matter for these two races? More importantly, headgear has been able to be toggled off from the start of 2.0, so there is absolutely nothing to lose by just letting everything be visible. If an individual player doesn't like the way their bunny ears clip through their hat, then they can turn it off and absolutely nothing would be lost from the situation we have now.

[reivaxe]

"Hrothgar will have a robust customization" (its obviously summarized). W0w...Much robust creation :P

I mean, it's true in a monkey's paw sense. No other race as the option to change body texture patterns and colors nor does any other race have the overtly different face features attached to each face that Hrothgar do. Hell, no other race has the degree of differences in faces that Hrothgar does given that the 4 faces they do have got different foreheads and ear shapes ontop of generally different base designs. It just came at the cost of the most fundamental option in making your character unique in a game with ZERO body customization. "Head stuff" is how you make your character look different compared to everyone else, it's 1 of the most striking things you can change about your character when you have no control over body shape and I have no clue wth was going through their minds when they decided to make these races have "highly limited head stuff".

On the topic of shared hairs and hats people get upset with me for saying this, but I really don't think there's a point to whining about shared hairs and hats. They've spoken about these race's head ish like once every 3 to 6-8 months, and it's been clear for over a year now that they don't intend to add old or new shared hairs or traditional hats. They've outright said it, best to accept that and focus on the things they HAVE promised which is new race unique hair/ faces.

When it comes to their heads, at this point it's a case of "the genie is out of the bottle". They're not going to take away something they've already given people, so they won't redesign them to be shaped in a way that allows them to work with the kitty head system. The only way I see them "fixing" this "miscalculation in design" is releasing 4 new heads for both races that are actually designed as "kitty head with slightly longer ears/ kitty head that's slightly more beastly looking face" and allowing those faces/ heads to be an option for people who want access to all these other things. Otherwise, besides completely giving up on some core design principles they're working under, the only way I see that fix coming would be through a massive graphics and CC engine update in the future.

And don't mistake me for defending them, I think they made many mistakes with these races and most of which aren't defensible. It's really a testament to how much I like the end result that I'd personally be fine with Female Hrothgar having ZERO hair (aka being bald like female lions) if they looked good to me and had hats. IMHO if they wanted to do these half races they shoulda made Viera a "FF14 original bunny girl" race with its own lore and its own "FF14 friendly head design" so it could have all the same options as kitty gals and they shoulda compromised on some cool things for Hrothgar in an attempt to make them more FF14 friendly (Like, there's no reason that Hrothgar heads need to be SO DIFFERENT that their hair options are stuck to their face of choice because .... the forehead and ears don't fit manes from other heads. Why even have "manes"? Draggo's race hair looks just as beastly in some cases, yet they're not limited)

[HeyMcFly]

Since Square Enix has increased it's playerbase- it's making waves in the MMO genre- A lacking character design should not be a problem with a company like Square Enix.. but it is.

I'd rather have a full patch full of content that is aimed at fixing & updating the character creator & the races rather than the same types of things they always release.

There should be no reason I can't wear my Matoya's Hat on my Viera- that's not an event item- it's a special item code given for using real money to buy one of their art books- it's not much different than mog station items
Hat's & hairstyles should be visible on Viera & Hrothgar, no question, when it comes to mog station.

Once you take a look at Viera & Hrothgar & find out how limited they are, it's a no brainer these races were rushed
Well, Take the time to make it right by fixing the elephant in the room
Give Viera & Hrothgar hats & the hairstyles from Mog Station & events

Viera & Hrothgar are being ignored by SE just as much as the players asking for Egi & Fairy glamour updates
SE isn't a small indie company with no money- they can take the time to fix these races & update the severely outdated character creator- they just won't due to "limitations" they don't feel like working around.

[LisSquid]

I'm alright with the devs not editing all hats in the game to work for V/H, but an exception SHOULD be made for mogstation items. Especially those that are part of costume sets. I'm also kind of confused as to why the YorHA hat works on viera, but not the tiny eastern hat that sit on the side of your head. I paid real $$ for the latter, and don't forget how long it took them to add " This head gear will not be displayed when equipped by Viera characters. " to mogstation listings.

[Akimori]

[QUOTE=SturmChurro;5535495] but hrothgar players don't seem to complain as much as viera players.
/QUOTE]

Haha...just going to say that hrot****[redacted] because they aren't being shown love by daddy SE. So they take matters into their own hands more often than now

I do hope this thread stays on the top page and attracts interesting view points from all around. I really do enjoy reading all of you guys' feedback!

[MorionQ]

I'm pretty sure the reason we see fewer Hrothgar complaints compared to Viera has more to do with just how many people actively play Viera compared to Hrothgar, which is pretty expected in an MMO popular in Asia, where female avatars are more popular in general. It's just basic math.

[reivaxe]

I'm pretty sure the reason we see fewer Hrothgar complaints compared to Viera has more to do with just how many people actively play Viera compared to Hrothgar, which is pretty expected in an MMO popular in Asia, where female avatars are more popular in general. It's just basic math.

Nah, it's because of the types of people who play each option. People who play a supermodel female race are more likely to whine about cosmetics than someone who decided to play a large, manly, beast headed race. It's like how Femroe are far less popular than Roebros, but you see far more people post images of their Femroe online for people to look at. People like playing dress up with the female characters.

That's not to say Hrothgar are all just hunky dory about it, I just see far more on twitter simply embrace mods and treat it as the norm even though they are in a far worse customization position.